Madame Blanchon, embroidered photograph on bed linen, 64h x 70.5w cm.
With the series Nothing, forever?, which Michele Landel began in 2021, she explores the lingering presence of someone who is gone and how one processes and captures that specific feeling. She cuts and photographs flowers from her garden that were planted by the previous owner over the nearly sixty years she lived in the house. She prints, paints, and stitches the photographs onto layers of old bed linens that belonged to the previous owner and were given to her by the woman’s children. Though the two women never met, they share the same home and garden. These flowers are intimate but impermanent and fragile connections to the previous owner and the history of the house. When she transfers the images to the bed sheets, the photographs become soft, blurred, and dreamlike, mimicking our memories of those who have left but are still remembered.
